As volunteers were distributing food parcels from the trucks, mortar rounds hit near the convoy and sent aid workers scrambling for cover, an AFP correspondent there said. They were able to resume delivery shortly after, with columns of smoke emerging in the cloudy sky overhead.

Eastern Ghouta has been suffering a devastating five-year siege imposed by government troops that has left its 400,000 residents struggling to find food and its hospitals crippled by shortages.

Thursday’s aid operation came after two consecutive days of medical evacuations from Douma, which saw dozens of civilians bussed out to receive treatment in Damascus.

Eastern Ghouta was designated in May 2017 as a “de-escalation zone” — an area where violence is supposed to be tamped down to pave the way for humanitarian assistance and a nationwide truce.

Army advances

But since February 18, Russian-backed government troops have pressed a ferocious air and ground campaign in Ghouta that has brought more than 60 percent of the one-time opposition bastion under government control.

The remaining rebel territory has been split into three isolated pockets.

Regime forces have worked to shave off territory from each of those areas, and late on Wednesday they stormed a key town in the southern rebel-held zone.

Syrian troops broke into Hammuriyeh amid heavy bombardment, with an AFP correspondent there reporting non-stop air strikes and barrel bombs.

The correspondent saw a man in the entrance of a building, crying over the bodies of his two dead children. Hours later, he too was killed in bombardment.

A doctor in the area said rescue teams could not get to victims because of the intensity of the bombardment.

“The wounded are on the roads. We can’t move them. The warplanes are targeting anything that moves,” Ismail al-Khateeb said late Wednesday.

On Thursday, fresh bombardment left at least three civilians dead in nearby towns in Ghouta, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.

That brought to 1,249 the total number of civilians — including 252 children — killed in the government’s assault on Ghouta.

The Britain-based Observatory said government troops were now in control of the eastern half of Hammuriyeh.

“This is the first time the regime has entered the town in five years,” said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.